The present invention relates to an apparatus to be used to manufacture gelled thin sheet made of silicone as material.
Silicone gel is an extremely useful material as a buffer material or a shock absorbing material. Silicone gel to be used for such application has, in most cases, a penetration value of approximately 50 to 200 measured according to JIS (Japanese Industrial Standard) K 2530-1976-(50 g load) and a small thickness.
In the conventional method for manufacturing a thin silicone gel sheet material as described above, silicone material such as, for example, Toray Silicone CY52 (trademark) (manufactured by Toray Silicone Kabushiki Kaisha) has been kneaded, transferred into a tray type container, uniformly leveled with a spatula type plate used by hand, and heated with a flat holding plate made of metal or glass placed on the silicone material extended in the tray type container.
However, said kneaded silicone gel material provides the property that it has the viscosity of 1000 to 1200CP when it does not contain other substances and that of 5000 to 10,000CP when it is kneaded with fine hollow particles and the pot life at a normal temperature is short and therefore there has been a problem that the work of filling the tray type container with this silicone material and leveling it in the container has been extremely troublesome and unsuitable for volume production.